Author: Michael Rohde

The news no online retailer wants to hear: around 30% of all online purchases are returned. What’s more, nearly half of all consumers will at one point return something they purchased online. For this holiday season, it is estimated that online holiday sales will rise 13.8% to $107.4 billion; imagine having a third of that …

Have you ever ordered something online and it never arrived? Despite tracking numbers and text confirmations, your online order is never fully considered “delivered” until it’s in your hands. Buying something online has turned into a waiting game to see when, or if, it’s going to arrive. This has happened to me more than once, …

The retail industry is steeped with historical best practices going back hundreds of years. Traditionally speaking, retail has been a slow moving industry where not much has changed over the decades, including the use of a single, local liquidator who buys your overstock and returned items. Many retail professionals are most likely still working with …

What’s not to love about Thanksgiving? Any holiday that focuses primarily on family and feasting is good with us! This year’s Turkey Day post is all about what our team is thankful for (don’t worry, the usual post about Black Friday/Cyber Monday remorse will post next week). We got some great responses from people located …

The current mobile phone market is growing exponentially and the rules are quickly changing. This is especially true for the secondary market, which alone is worth $17 billion. Let this data soak in: there’s an estimated 4.6 billion cell phones in use throughout the world and when those devices are returned, they will need data …

We get that signing a fixed-term contract with a major liquidator or handful of buyers can provide a certain sense of relief: a signed contract virtually guarantees a predictable removal time for all of your excess stock. However, fixed-term contracts with a limited amount of buyers can create challenges, not to mention dependencies. By working …

Do the math on what that means for returns…. While the retail apocalypse rages on for brick and mortar stores, research shows that online sales are booming: volume is expected to increase at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 9% over the next decade and, based on this rate, U.S. online retail sales are …

Challenge A Fortune 500 retailer had been working with B-Stock to sell its returned and excess inventory via a private B2B liquidation marketplace. As pricing and buyer engagement on these mixed lots leveled out, it was clear a new strategy to increase bidding and recovery was needed. Solution To increase buyer engagement and drive up …

Goodbye jack o’lanterns and Halloween candy; hello holiday shopping season! November 1 marked the official start of the holidays: that special time of year when retailers hope to incentivize shoppers to spend, spend, spend. Though Thanksgiving weekend is when the bulk of shopping is done, decisions about where consumers will shop and what they’ll buy …

It was a dark and stormy afternoon on October 31. B-Stock’s San Francisco office was wrapping up its work to prepare for that evening’s company Halloween party. Similar activities were taking place in the Boston, Salt Lake City and Florida offices. Everyone at B-Stock loved Halloween: the costumes; the candy; the ancient tradition of scaring …